The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk by David Ambrose

Author:David Ambrose [Ambrose, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Psychological, Amnesia, Espionage, Fiction
ISBN: 9780743416139
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-06-16T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

LATIMER WEST’S OFFICE was on the top floor of the main building. She imagined, when she thought about it, that the view must be impressive, but she never seemed able to take note of it when she was there. It was like an office in a private apartment, not some corporate place. She suspected there were living quarters attached, though she didn’t know if this was his permanent home, at least while he held the job, or whether he had some other place of his own. Somehow she imagined him in New York, on the Upper East Side, leading an elegant bachelor existence and going to cocktail parties and the opera with women older than himself. She wondered if he was gay, and decided he was simply sexless. Intimacy, she suspected, would be as disturbing and repulsive to Latimer West as it would to any other unfortunate individual involved—although, she reminded herself as the elevator slowed, this was perhaps a biased view.

The elevator doors opened directly into West’s office, and closed behind her as she stepped out onto the thick, soft carpet. He was expecting her, so he made no pretense of being too engrossed in work to acknowledge her arrival. He didn’t get to his feet but looked up from his desk with a smile—the kind she thought of as a diplomatic smile, suggesting that as both right and might were on his side, this interview was going to be pretty much a formality.

“Well, Susan,” he began, leaning back and steepling his fingers in a way that she had always thought should carry a capital penalty, “what’s so urgent that you have to talk to me this afternoon? I’m really rather busy.”

“Why don’t you take a wild guess?” she said, abandoning every resolution she had made on the way up to avoid losing her temper. “It’s just possible you may hit something not too far from the bull’s-eye, something you said we’d get around to discussing when I’d done what you wanted me to do. Now I’ve done it, so if it’s all the same to you, I’d like my life back, and with it my son and my father.”

He continued to lean back looking up at her, his smile not slipping an inch, his fingers apparently glued at their tips. “Nothing was ever said,” he intoned piously, “about a specific time frame. Your work has been first-class, I’m genuinely grateful for all you’ve done. I know at times it hasn’t been easy.”

As though to forestall any remark she may have been about to make, he swung his chair around and slid his elbows onto the edge of his desk. It was a maneuver of such fluid, practiced grace that, to her annoyance, she found herself almost admiring it.

“But let’s be sensible about this, Susan. The project’s not complete yet, and your work isn’t over. You’ve seen your son, he’s being well looked after and he’s quite happy—especially now that he has his grandfather with him. Maybe you’re not able to see him as often as you’d like, but you see him often.

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